Deanna Troi is one of the greatest characters to grace the small screen

I've become so obsessed with Marina Sirtis' performance as Deanna Troi. It's both campy and genuinely moving.
Does anyone else think she's as wonderful as I do?
Those body suits put her into gay icon status for me.

I sense great sadness coming from this creature.

She does give lots of vague advice like, "He's hiding something; I don't know what it is, but his intentions aren't pure."
Of course the actor in question is so over the top suspicious it would be impossible not to know he is hiding something.

I'll have you ejected into space, is that clear, Subcommander?

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She really needed to eject those camel-toe-inducing clingpants.... Into Space.
We called it the Dromedary Squats when she'd flash those massive Greek labia puffs as she assumed a pose of intense yet (as R2 said) vague intuitions. "I sense tightness, and a little swelling. And maybe a wet spot if I don't get these knees closer together in the next five seconds."

Fun fact: Marina HATES chocolate in real life. It shows what a brilliant actress she is in that she's far more animated, humorous and warm in person than as her role of the serious counselor.

She has acknowledged her weaknesses as an actress and Rodenberry's costume designer's predilections for making Troi look like a space bimbo.

I sense polyester chafing my clitoris...

Not sure why they made her empathic rather than telepathic, since Deanna communicated telepathically with her mother. Her empathic insights were always so stupid - she's afraid! He's conflicted! He's lying!

You're horny! Oh god, Wesley, why are you always so horny! It comes off you in waves, it's nauseating!

"Captain, I sense a swelling in Wesley's pants every time he's near Riker."

She was a couple candy bars away from bursting her outfit.

r13 is another male homo afraid of a woman's figure. She feels soft too, Nancy.

Captain, I sense the onset of a loud ripping sound followed by a pungent smell every time you stand up to address the view screen...

R14- actually I'm a lesbian .

R13

Marina Sirtis and Shohreh Aghdashloo should play sisters some time.

R17, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Shohreh Aghdashloo should play granddaughter and grandmother, respectively.

A lovely diva in the vein of the great Mia Korf, the real Blair Daimler.

But she ever do it with a ghost? Did she?

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Captain... I'm sensing some very bitter old queens trolling the Murder She Wrote thread... I've never seen such sadness and pain before...

You think Deanna is campier than me?! My body was taken over by an energy cloud, I got caught in a temporal rift, and was turned into a dog by Q. What more do you want?

Dr. Crusher, lesbian

Dr. Crusher should have been left in her dog form.

She seems to be doing well now on NCIS.

[quote]Dr. Crusher should have been left in her dog form.
I'm 99% sure she was.

Really? Of all thousands of characters in all tv series? Have to disagree.

Well... she understood Republicans, anyway...
Counselor Deanna Troi: [as Major Rakal] In order to defeat your enemy, you must first understand them. The Federation wishes to avoid war at all costs. So - I will offer them a diplomatic solution, get them to lower their shields, and then... destroy them!

Check out Marina's convention appearances on Youtube - she is very funny and has a great sense of self-deprecating humor. She also likes to (good-naturedly) talk shit about her TNG co-stars.

Deanna Troi was the queen of stating the obvious.

I believe Denise Crosby had been cast as Deanna Troi and Marina Sirtis was cast as Tasha Yar (then called Tasha Gonzales), but the casting director decided to switch their roles.

It's impossible to rate Troi's campiest scenes, but right up there has to be her emergency counseling session with the angry oil slick that killed Tasha Yar. It had abandonment issues.

They never showed her counseling Riker when he would start sobbing after sex. Or Wesley when he started coming to terms with his attraction to Captain Picard.

I was always afraid they were going to make a spinoff with Wesley and his young school friends.
Troi had some campy scenes, but she also had some tremendously touching moments. I think it's wrong to write her off as a "bad actress" (unlike the completely dreadful Crosby).

They had to cut the scene when Chad Allen guest starred between him and Wesley. Chad kept putting his hands all over Wesley.

I love that her character was so indistinct they could write scenes and plug in her if Whoopi Goldberg was unavailable to play Guinan.

Denise Crosby really stank up every scene. God, she was an awful actress. Thankfully, she left the show early.

Deanna Troi was hilarious. She was an "empath"; that is, she could actually sense and feel the emotions of others. But her voice and manner and facial expressions gave the impression of someone who totally bored with everything. Feelings? It was like she didn't have any. Even when she'd let out a scream it seemed fake. Did Marina Sirtis decide to play her character as a deadly calm, oddly unemotional type or is she just a lousy actress?
Actually ALL the characters on ST:THG were deadly dull and uninteresting, with the possible exceptions of Worf and Data. The Klingon and the Robot; they were both more likeable and sympathetic than the human characters. I contrast the human characters on ST:TNG with the characters on the original (Kirk, Spock, Bones, Scotty, etc.) and in comparison the former ALL seem like a bunch of cold, dead fish. All of them completely dispassionate, even when they were in romantic situations. Just deadly dull personalities.

Her best moments were when she served as the foil to her mother, Lwaxana Troi (the widow Roddenberry). With someone so over the top, one would think that Deanna would just blend into the background as she did in almost every other moment, but with Lwaxana she paradoxically glowed, as if she was made better by the reflected campiness.

I always loved the fabulous Majel Barrett (RIP) as Troi's mother Lwaxanna Troi, who you just know was the biggest hag in the Alpha Quadrant.

Deanna was good with her mother.
For some reason this thread reminded me of Sigorney Weaver's character in Galaxy Quest, where her main purpose was to repeat something obvious or something that had just been said. She was probably meant to be more of a spoof on Uhura basically being a telephone operator, but some of that reminds me of Troi.

Love Galaxy Quest!
"That script was poorly written!"

I hated Dr. Crusher with the passion of a million suns. Not that she'd notice, the most unobservant doctor in the galaxy. Loved Q.

Why the Dr. Crusher hate, R52? Although, with your love of Q, the worst, most irrelevant and shark-jumping turdlet in the franchise, it's plain to see you're a lunatic.

I believe you all meant Lwaxana Troi -- daughter of the Fifth House of Betazed, the Holder of the Sacred Chalice of Rixx, and Heir to the Holy Rings of Betazed.

R55 it's because Gates McFadden was only a split second away from cradling a coffee mug. All that was stopping her from gazing wistfully into the rain soaked afternoon light while perched on a window ledge was that they were in space. The entire time she looked like she was in a bad Depends commercial. At least Q was fun, unpredictable, and had some acting range.
Anyone who is a natural born cradler should be shunned by all civilized people.

"The entire time she looked like she was in a bad Depends commercial."
She was positively lively to the point of being a supernova as Beverly Crusher compared to how she looked on Marker, the series in which she co-starred with Richard Grieco after Star Trek: The Next Generation, where she was nearly catatonic. (And, yes, Richard Grieco; I admit I watched it for the eye candy he was and no longer is - by a long shot or many shots, lines and hits later.)
And despite her limitations and dullness, I still wish she had married Picard on the show and despise Pulaski with the heat of ten thousand Nexuses. (Nexai?)

Beverly was boring, but: she got some great universe-bending episodes, and the love story with Picard was nice.

I loved Pulaski.
She hated Data, as did I.

Hey ya'll, I'm yoni out tonight and want to wear the Sacred Rings, who borrowed them? And is that the Sacred Chaluce bring used for your half-caff semi-skim extra hot no foam pumpkin spice latte? Deanna, bring me the axe!!!!

I remember being startled when hearing her British accent for the first time. I'd been so used to hearing her Troi voice.

Why did the ship's counselor get to sit next to the captain on the bridge? And what was she doing in that chair most of the time when she wasn't giving vague and obvious "readings" of whatever lumpy forehead they were talking to that week?
Was she leafing through INTERGALACTIC CAMEL TOE MONTHLY on one of those ipads most of the time?
And did any other ship ever have a counselor on the bridge?

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I just watched the fantastic episode 6.3, "Man of the People." An ambassador uses Troi as a "receptacle" to funnel his negative energy. This causes her to become mean and nasty, as well as a total sexpot and then age rapidly until death.
She chews so much scenery I'm surprised the Enterprise was still standing by the end.
I truly love her.

Worf... Riker... This is Troi... I need you in my quarters immediately.
And bring Wesley, we'll find a use for him one way or another.

Let us not forget that she dated Worf for some time too. Girl got to get intimate with Klingon loDjan (and you all know what they say about Klingon loDjan.....)

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Riker didn't mind getting freaky. I bet he got in on that action.

Hey Guinan...I was just over by Jeffries Tube Five and I overheard two transporter technicians talking. Apparently Commander Riker and the Counselor like to practice Romulan sex rituals with Lt. Worf! You didn't hear it from me...

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Hi little one! I still act like I get wet down there and suck Ferengi cock. I'm an intergalactic MILF. LOVE ME LOVE ME LOVE ME.

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I used to love the times when the show would show Deanna doing her "office hours" and stuff. Basically her and a walk-on talking about things: "Tell me how you feel"...

R64: In an episode, Captain Picard explained he made the decision that the ship's counselor should sit on the bridge, citing her empathic abilities as the reason.

I loved next generation as a kid, but in retrospect, you don't get much more 80's than having a ship counselor being next to the captain on the bridge.

In later seasons, they tried to butch her up by having her complete her certification to get her rank, putting her in a uniform, and doing episodes like the one where she was kidnapped by the Romulan resistance.

R69, Crusher and Riker did have sex once. She had fallen in love with an alien emissary not realizing the body was actually controlled by a symbiotic life form that couldn't survive on its own but would be accepted into hosts. This was an early version of the Trill (think Dax of Deep Space Nine), but in this version, the symbiotic life form and host didn't "share" control of the body. The personality and decisions were strictly the symbiotic life form's.
After the host was killed, the symbiotic life form was placed in Riker as a placeholder. Crusher was conflicted about her feelings, but Troi encouraged her to continue the relationship. Troi had some ridiculous line about going for it if Crusher loves the alien and "Riker's body could give her pleasure" or something like that. So Crusher did.
Then the replacement showed up, and the symbiotic life form was transferred to its new permanent host. The host, however, was female, and Crusher just couldn't deal with the idea of same-sex loving and ended the relationship.
She later had an affair with a ghost, but whatever.

They didn't need to butch her up to make her useful. Considering the amount of negotiating and maneuvering the Captain is required to do in practically any mission, an empath should be fairly useful. It's just that the writers never gave her more to say than "I sense that he believes what he's saying" or "I sense fear" or something equally as dull and useless. She should have always been portrayed as a natural at espionage (which they did eventually get around to) and a master at diplomacy. The idea of her sitting on the bridge next to the Captain made perfect sense. It's just that they never knew how to write her in a way to justify it.

Remember when Data and Tasha Yar were screwing? If only the walls of Deck 17 could talk.
By the way, I have given Data physicals, and it is fucking huge.

Dr. Crusher, fingering herself in Sick Bay

I don't think they needed to justify it, R76. Why was LaForge stationed on the bridge half the time? Why did both Picard and Riker need to be sitting on the bridge all the time? Surely it would make more sense for each of them to pull 12-hour shifts, but no, they wanted their main cast members in one setting.

"Surely it would make more sense for each of them to pull 12-hour shifts"
R78 = Captain Jellico

Love Troi. She was one of the first women -- on tv or in real life -- to give me an inkling that my future might be filled with softball games, flannel shirts and bread pudding.

Was Gates McFadden bowlegged? She always looked like she was walking in a particular way just to hide it. I think I saw one scene were it was a full body shot and she looked like her legs were shaped like a giant horseshoe!

They did have what they called the 'night shift' where Data had the Captain's chair, didn't they? And they would dim the lights even? LOL. Data probably had a YouTube show no one knew about... Data, After Dark... where he would spill all their secrets using a whisper voice or something.

Totally agree R73. I really loved the show when it was on. Watching it now I only really like it as a Star Trek show. It sometimes seems like a ship commanded by the Human Resources Department. This is why I like Voyager better. It's more action oriented. Voyager holds up the best as well.

I remember in a few episodes that take place in Deanna's quarters, she has this big soaking tub/jacuzzi in there. I want to know how that was regulation!
"But Captain, sometimes I need to recharge my Betazoid powers in a bubble bath!!"

R84, that was the Sacred Jacuzzi of Rixx. Not allowing it in her quarters would have been seen as a violation of the Federation Charter's provisions on freedom of religion.

Troi was dull, dull, dull, and added nothing to the proceedings. As others have posted upthread, her pronouncements were weak and obvious. As an infrequent viewer, I always thought that she had no clear purpose, and she was nothing more than filler. I read that early during the series' run, Troi was at risk of being written out because the writers did not know what to do with her.
At the time, my understanding (perhaps, erroneous) was that Tasha Yar was one of the most popular characters, and that viewers liked Crosby's portrayal of her. Because of that, I thought it was odd that Yar was written out.

'Tasha Yar was written out because Crosby wanted out. She wanted out because she was very popular and wanted to see if she could go on to bigger and better. Obviously she didn't. I really liked 'Tasha Yar and thought her departure left a hole that was never really filled.
Her return episode was one of the best of the series. If not the best.

R77 - Yes, in The Naked Now, aka The Naked Yar.

Who authorized the hiring of Alexander, Worf's son, as a recurring guest star? He's TERRIBLE!
I'm watching the episode where the two of them have an adventure in a Wild West holodeck program and it's painful.
I love Michelle Forbes and wish she had been made a series regular. She fills the Tasha Yar slot and can act circles around many of the cast. Too bad she only pops up now and then.

Riker squeezing into those uniforms near the end of the show were some of the best special effects of the whole show. Big fat ass.

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As a young gay boy, I was insanely in lust with season one Riker. I lived for those profile shots of him, because there was almost always some cock-tentage going on in the front of his Starfleet uniform.

My favorite TNG character was actually Patti Yasutake as Nurse Alyssa Ogawa.
I always thought it should have been her, not Keiko O'Brien, who left the Enterprise to go to DS9.
There she would give up medicine and decide to open up a combination nail salon/laundry service on The Promenade.

As I'm making my way through the Star Trek canon I'm nearing the midway point of season 6, which is when Deep Space 9 began. Should I watch the remainder of TNG in tandem with DS9, or will I be ok finishing TNG and then beginning DS9 from the beginning?

R116, I would watch them in tandem because in the first season of DS9 there are some cross-relationships between the two. You could enjoy DS9 on its own, but I prefer keeping the linear pace.

DS9 can be viewed stand alone.

DS9 should be viewed only to watch the camptastic Louise Fletcher as Kai Winn

R119, equally camptastic is Garak (Andrew Robinson) who could also be a subtle actor when called for on DS9. He also played the definitive Liberace in a made for TV movie.

Andrew Robinson is probably best known for his portrayal of the psychotic Scorpio in "Dirty Harry." He was so convincing as the nutjob murderer that he got death threats!

There's a classic on now, where Deanna is trying to figure out what caused 30 crew members on another ship to go crazy and kill each other...she's having nightmares about floating through some weird green place with the two big lights....

Two balls... floating in a sack... I try to touch them, but they pull up towards the body...

[quote]Am I the only one who found Michael Dorn hot?
Not at all! The first time I saw Dorn out of his makeup for a TV interview, my jaw dropped. I thought that he was one of the most handsome men I had ever seen on TV. His face, height, build, and voice... damn. One of my absolute ideal total packages.